Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1940)

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Six weeks in Reno and it's all over. It's a wonderful age we live in, isn't it?" Ann found herself twisting her hands together as though they were cold. She thought: "I'm cracking up. This is the way it happens. You crack up inside and then it starts coming out and you twist your hands and find the back of your neck aching as though somebody had hit you with a mallet. You try to tell yourself jokes and you feel very clever, but you can't laugh." The tightness in her throat got worse and she had a queer aching feeling behind her eyes. All her life, Ann had responded to these symptoms with one course of action, which was to take a bath. She deserted the couch and went swiftly to the bathroom where she turned on the water and sat on the edge of the tub undressing and crying at the same time. As she cried, she thought irrelevantly, "I always thought there'd be wonderful songbirds in Honolulu, but there aren't. I wonder why." The traces of tears had effectively been erased with cold cream and applications of hot and cold water, when the creaking of the bedroom door announced the presence of the little Japanese doll who served them their breakfast and quietly padded about effacing all evidences of their untidiness. Keiko stood in the doorway, hiding her hands in the folds of her gaily patterned kimono. "Please," she said shyly. Shealways began that way. After she had given that word time to sink in, she repeated it and added, "A man and a lady." ANN found Randy and Caroline in the drawing room watching the bedroom door through which she came as though they were a couple of cats who had cornered one mouse. "Well," Caroline said heartily, as though she had practiced it, "hello." "Hello," Ann said. She looked at Randy and her worst suspicions were confirmed. Whenever Caroline was worried, Randy looked serene. The worse things got, the serener Randy got until, when things were at their blackest, his face wore a vacant expression usually attributed to those who walk in their sleep. "We just came over," Randy said, in response to Ann's look. They seemed singularly jumpy. "What's up?" Ann said. As one voice they said, "Nothing." Ann said to Randy, "Do you want a drink?" Randy said, "Yes, please," with such alacrity that the words ran together. Ann rang for Keiko. "See David over at the beach? He went surfing." "Well . . ." Randy said. "As a matter of fact, yes," said Caroline rapidly. "The Scotch, Keiko." Ann looked at Caroline and then at Randy. "What's the matter with you two?" Caroline said brightly, "Nothing. We — we just came over." Keiko came in and put the whisky at Randy's elbow. She plopped some ice into the glasses and said, "Please," to Randy. " 'Please,' what?" Randy said. "That's all," Ann said. "Just, 'please.' Don't press her about it because she cries very easily." Randy smiled rather uncertainly at Keiko, and she bent in the middle as though she were hung from the ceiling (Continued from page 76) on strings. Randy said to Ann, "What do I do now?" "Say 'Thank you' and she'll go away." Randy said, "Thank you," and Keiko vanished, eyes demurely downcast. Caroline drew a deep breath. Randy's face took on added serenity and he sipped his drink, staring into it. "We met David on the beach," Caroline said. "He — he asked us to give you a message." Randy said testily, "Don't act as though it were the message to Garcia. What's so world-shaking about a man's being late for dinner?" "Did he say how late he'd be?" Ann was puzzled. She kept looking from one to the other of them, but they were strangely unhelpful. Caroline shook her head. Randy shook his head. Caroline looked at her shoes and Randy inspected his drink. Ann said, "Well, I'd better tell them in the kitchen. You'll stay, won't you?" "Yes," Caroline said, as though she were accepting an invitation to commit suicide. When Ann was gone, Randy put down his glass impatiently. "Now see here," he said, "the very least she could suspect, the way you've been acting, is that we've murdered David and buried him somewhere between here and Waikiki. All that's actually happened is that he came up to us on the beach, seemed rather upset and asked us to tell Ann he'd be late for dinner." "Why was he upset?" Caroline demanded. "Why is he going to be late for dinner? Where could he go that he couldn't take Ann?" "I don't know!" Caroline's was the voice of doom. "Something's wrong." "All right, something's wrong. But if being late for dinner is synonymous with trouble, then the world's full of trouble." "There's no reason to be late for dinner in Honolulu," Caroline said, with a kind of feminine logic which should be stamped out. Randy said, "I'm not going to marry you. I've just made up my mind." "I don't remember ever accepting you," Caroline retorted, huffily. She picked up the evening paper, effectually indicating that the discussion was at an end. They sat in hostile paperrustling and ice-clinking silence. Presently, Randy said, "Maybe Ann knows how pineapples grow. I think . . . I'm not sure . . . the man I borrowed the money from wears glasses. It's coming back to me gradually. He said, 'I'm in the pineapple business,' and I said, 'Do you need any capital?' and he said, 'No,' and then I said, 'Well I do,' and he gave it to me and then we spent the rest of the evening together somewhere in a cellar. . . ." "What?" Caroline jumped. "It was a very nice cellar," Randy said, on the defensive. "Some kind of a club. What's wrong with you? You've gone quite white. Can I get you something?" "No thank you. I've got something." She brandished the paper under his nose as though he'd been responsible for printing it. "Do you know who's here?" "Napoleon?" Randy said, politely. "Laurel Crane. She came in this morning on the Clipper." Randy set his glass down and snatched the paper. There it was, in the list of Clipper arrivals: Laurel Crane. He lowered the paper, looking grave. "Better throw up the fortifications," he said, "there's going to be a fight. Laurel's not giving up so easily." "What kind of a woman can she be?" Caroline was almost crying. , "Laurel's not a woman. She's just trouble wrapped in skin." And in the cocktail bar of the Royal Palms Hotel, David sat facing Laurel Crane. He remembered a lot of things, sitting there. While Laurel's long, nervous white hands mashed out the fire of a cigarette just lit and turned to the careful destruction of a paper napkin in Laurel-like patterns, Laurel's deep voice said the cutting and wooing things which were Laurel-like too. David, without wanting to, remembered months back when she'd left him without even saying good-by. He could still feel the pain he'd felt (as though a man could forget those long nights staring at the ceiling and wondering where he'd failed), still writhe at the recollection of going into the studio to work under lights that stabbed eyes which had been open all night. He could remember trying to say easily, "Laurel? Oh, she's away for a rest. Nobody can go the pace that Laurel goes without needing a rest occasionally, you know. When? Oh . . ." vaguely, "she'll be back soon." Then that awful, cheery smile. "I hope she'll be back soon. Being a bachelor isn't my idea of fun. Dinner? I'd love it." I HOSE dinners. Sometimes he'd drunk too much trying to keep from seeing Laurel where she wasn't. The mornings after those evenings he would tell himself nervously that his depression was caused by the alcohol the night before. The thing was to keep a clear head, see things clearly. He'd go for several weeks without a drink and then the dinners were one long, clear agony. Once he remembered kissing a girl violently and telling her he was mad about her, and after that she kept calling him up and he felt an awful swine, but he couldn't bring himself to talk to her. And all these things, one by one, he piled up against Laurel without knowing it. But he still waited to hear from her. He did, finally. She had filed suit for divorce. She was unfair that way and full of surprises. "I don't mean to say," Laurel was saying, "that I believe marriages are made in heaven, but I've come to believe that if something's in your blood it's there to stay. You try and put me out of your mind. Just try" "I don't have to try," David said. "I have." "You're lying," Laurel said, dispassionately, "I don't blame you, but I don't believe you either. You've married a milksop who's willing to bring you your slippers. But that isn't what you want. I know you better than you know yourself, David." "You're a vicious woman," David said. "I may be vicious, but I'm the woman you want," Laurel said. "You've tried to tell yourself that it's the way I look and your pride in me that you're missing, but that's not true either. It's something else. It's what I am. It's what you wanted to live with for the rest of your life and without me you feel empty and unfinished. When you're with her you feel quite separate and all one person inside your own skin. But when we were together you didn't feel that and that was right. That's the way it should be." "Will you, for God's sake, stop talking?" David said. "No," said Laurel. "They've laid down nice little rules about what a woman should say when her former husband has married another woman. But I don't follow the rules. I never have. Why should I start now?" David reflected despairingly that the usual arguments couldn't be used 78 PHOTOPLAY